There were also many shochetim in the town. The poultry we bought, whether in Drohobycz or in Lwow, was always slaughtered by a shochet. Sometimes the shochet would come to our house and slaughter the chicken there.
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Major events (political and historical)
4256
- Armenian genocide 2
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Holocaust
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Communism
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Displaying 29971 - 30000 of 50826 results
Ludwik Hoffman
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I went there only for the state ceremonies, such as 11th November [anniversary of Poland’s regaining of independence in 1918], Pilsudski’s birthday or the 3rd May [11] holiday. Schoolchildren of Jewish religion took part in such ceremonies obligatorily. We’d march in divided into classes, and then the rabbi would deliver a speech in Polish in the presence of the government officials, this is the district governor, the town mayor, and the military district commander. After the ceremony we’d join an official street parade.
,
Before WW2
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The poorer part of the Jewish population lived in a neighborhood called Lam, where the main synagogue was also located, one of the largest synagogues in the whole Galicia region.
That synagogue was something of a German-style ‘templum.’ I went there only for the state ceremonies, such as 11th November [anniversary of Poland’s regaining of independence in 1918], Pilsudski’s birthday or the 3rd May [11] holiday. Schoolchildren of Jewish religion took part in such ceremonies obligatorily. We’d march in divided into classes, and then the rabbi would deliver a speech in Polish in the presence of the government officials, this is the district governor, the town mayor, and the military district commander. After the ceremony we’d join an official street parade. The synagogue building was a very imposing structure whose ruins have survived to this day. There’s no one, however, to reconstruct it, the people living in Drohobycz are poor, and I don’t think the Jews scattered across the world would be willing to do it. Besides the main synagogue, there were about 20 smaller synagogues and prayer houses in the town.
We prayed at a synagogue located near our house, at the back of the market place, on Garncarska Street. Besides us, it was frequented by several very wealthy merchants and industrialists, as well as by some poorer people. We sat at the main wall, this is the eastern one, near where the ark was located. My father occupied one of the most eminent seats in the synagogue. The synagogue was rather of the reformed style. It was managed by a gentleman who was also the chief accountant of a major oil company, and who also operated the registration office where the births and deaths were registered. He wore a derby hat and had a clean-shaven face. His name was Mr. Szpander. The chief rabbi was a captain in the Polish army and a doctor of theology, but whether he had his own synagogue or prayed at the main one, I don’t know. Nor do I remember his name.
That synagogue was something of a German-style ‘templum.’ I went there only for the state ceremonies, such as 11th November [anniversary of Poland’s regaining of independence in 1918], Pilsudski’s birthday or the 3rd May [11] holiday. Schoolchildren of Jewish religion took part in such ceremonies obligatorily. We’d march in divided into classes, and then the rabbi would deliver a speech in Polish in the presence of the government officials, this is the district governor, the town mayor, and the military district commander. After the ceremony we’d join an official street parade. The synagogue building was a very imposing structure whose ruins have survived to this day. There’s no one, however, to reconstruct it, the people living in Drohobycz are poor, and I don’t think the Jews scattered across the world would be willing to do it. Besides the main synagogue, there were about 20 smaller synagogues and prayer houses in the town.
We prayed at a synagogue located near our house, at the back of the market place, on Garncarska Street. Besides us, it was frequented by several very wealthy merchants and industrialists, as well as by some poorer people. We sat at the main wall, this is the eastern one, near where the ark was located. My father occupied one of the most eminent seats in the synagogue. The synagogue was rather of the reformed style. It was managed by a gentleman who was also the chief accountant of a major oil company, and who also operated the registration office where the births and deaths were registered. He wore a derby hat and had a clean-shaven face. His name was Mr. Szpander. The chief rabbi was a captain in the Polish army and a doctor of theology, but whether he had his own synagogue or prayed at the main one, I don’t know. Nor do I remember his name.
As for the town itself, Drohobycz had a population of thirty-something thousand, fifteen thousand of which were Jews. They didn’t live in any specific parts of the town but were scattered across it. The neighborhood where we lived was close to downtown and was a wealthy one. On our street, Shevchenky, there stood 14 houses, of which five or six were inhabited by Catholic families and the rest by Jewish ones. On the main streets in downtown Drohobycz, the proportion between the Catholics and the Jews was, you can say, fifty-fifty. The poorer part of the Jewish population lived in a neighborhood called Lam, where the main synagogue was also located, one of the largest synagogues in the whole Galicia region.
As those days you usually went to study abroad, the plan was, as I’ve mentioned above, for me to enroll at a business college in Vienna. But 1938 thwarted those plans. After the Anschluss [10], I could no longer go there. We hadn’t realized that anti-Semitism in Austria had reached such an advanced stage. There was no mention of that in our circles.
,
Before WW2
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Those days, any Jew’s dream was to educate his children in some direction.
,
Before WW2
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Leon Lifsches
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As for my brothers, Henryk left Russia with the Anders’ army and went with it to Palestine, where he stayed with his wife and daughter. They had one more daughter, but I can’t remember her name. My brother died in 1978. I didn’t attend his funeral, it wasn’t allowed to go to Israel [the Soviet Bloc countries didn’t have diplomatic relations with Israel from 1967 to 1989].
,
After WW2
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In Warsaw I joined the Social and Cultural Society of Polish Jews [21] and was a co-founder and board member of the Association of Jewish War Veterans. That was in 1987. As a group of social activists, we undertook efforts aimed at setting up an organization of Jewish war veterans. I was initially the head of the veteran department for the Warsaw region, and then, for three terms, a total of 12 years, the chairman of the welfare committee.
,
After WW2
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I got a job at a cooperative called Optima. I worked for some two years there as deputy chief executive for sales, but eventually left because the company was utterly corrupt and they wanted me to participate in their swindles, so I called it quits and took early retirement, at the age of 55 – that is in 1970.
,
After WW2
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I was fired as part of the March story [20]. People were harassed, fired from their jobs, my son was expelled from Warsaw University. The famous philosopher, Kotarbinski intervened on his behalf. My son was friend with his grandson and after some time he was readmitted to the university.
,
After WW2
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In Warsaw I worked at the Ministry of Crafts, as the head of the military department, and then in the State Reserves Office, I don’t remember since when.
,
After WW2
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My children knew about their roots. Our home was completely non-religious, but they have never disavowed [their Jewishness]. In fact, everyone knew that my son would punch any kid who’d derisively call him a Jew. I’ve never changed my last name. My younger son opposes anti-Semitism vehemently if he finds himself among people of such views. As far as Jewish matters go, they haven’t forgotten their roots.
,
After WW2
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He lived in Denmark for a long time, left Poland in the 1970s, fed up with the anti-Semitism.
,
After WW2
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My other son had many wives and has a son with his second one.
,
After WW2
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Andrzej has a degree in sociology, lives in Canada, works as a librarian, and the younger one is a kind of electronics engineer.
,
After WW2
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She was a dressmaker by profession.
,
After WW2
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She wasn’t Jewish, but she fought in a partisan unit in the Rzeszow area.
,
During WW2
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I was a member of the Polish Workers’ Party [PPR] [19], a party official; I served for some time as secretary for economic matters on the provincial committee in Bielsko. All the time in the textile industry, in the Textile Industry Federation, and in 1952 I was transferred to Warsaw.
,
After WW2
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Following the liberation of Warsaw, in 1945, I was sent back to Lublin, and directly from there, already released from service, to Silesia, to Katowice, and from Katowice to Bielsko, because the rule was that all officers and professionals were sent to areas they knew to join the reconstruction effort there. I took part in the reconstruction of industry.
,
1945
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I took part in the liberation of Lublin [23rd July 1944, the city was Poland’s temporary capital for the next 164 days], and then in the liberation of Warsaw [17th January 1945].
,
During WW2
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I was the second in command of the regiment’s medical company. I personally took part in taking wounded soldiers away from the front line under enemy fire. During one such excursion to the front line I was heavily wounded. I went through several hospitals between October and May, and eventually found myself in a Polish hospital in Moscow, where I underwent the final surgery.
After being released from the hospital, I was sent back to the front, to the headquarters, in Lutsk, Ukraine, and from there I went with the army as an officer, already wounded in battle, with the back units.
After being released from the hospital, I was sent back to the front, to the headquarters, in Lutsk, Ukraine, and from there I went with the army as an officer, already wounded in battle, with the back units.
,
During WW2
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Me and Iziek fought in the Battle of Lenino, and my brother was killed virtually a couple of steps away from me.
We were in Tashkent until 12th May 1943, after which date we left the city to join the 1st Division [18].
,
During WW2
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We received support from the MOPR Central Committee. There was a large group of Jews in Tashkent at the time, several hundred people. Tashkent had a sizeable Jewish minority in itself, plus there were many of us, the émigrés. We were a large, strong communist group, kind of affiliated with the MOPR Central Committee. The party itself had been banned.
,
During WW2
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I got a job in Tashkent as a dyer in a cooperative, Iziek worked in a state textile factory, also in Tashkent. We lived in an Uzbek quarter, called Barkhan, with a Russian lady who had also been evacuated, in very primitive conditions.
,
During WW2
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It was 1942. And so, illegally, me and a whole group of people, we hopped on a train carrying Polish soldiers released from camps, and we rode towards the Anders’ army, towards Tashkent. Eventually I found myself in a place near Bukhara where they told us to pull our pants down and said, ‘about turn!’ End of story, they checked whether we were circumcised. By that time, Jews were no longer admitted into the Anders’ army [16].
,
During WW2
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Iziek was still on the front, somewhere near Moscow. And from there, he was also sent to the trudarmia [15], to Tashkent. We met many of our friends in Novosibirsk. One was a guy named Sternlicht, from Bielsko, his wife worked in the canteen, gave us some extra food, and it was there I learned that my three brothers, Michal, Henryk, and Iziek, were in Tashkent.
,
During WW2
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Before the outbreak of the [German-Soviet] war [13], I was enlisted in the Red Army, and Iziek was called up for the so called reserve drill. And there war met us and we didn’t return home, becoming, as you call it, front-liners instead. I served on the Ukrainian front and there we were demobilized and sent away – we were to join the Anders’ army [14]. All those who came from Western Ukraine were demobilized with us, as ‘unreliable element.’ That was early 1942.
We were enlisted in the work battalions, the so called ‘stroybats’ [Russian stroityelniy battalion – construction battalion]. They told us we would join the Anders’ army and instead we found ourselves in Novosibirsk as stroybat members, building a metallurgical plant at minus 40 degrees Celsius. And there, a group of 200 soldiers, we mutinied and organized a strike.
We were enlisted in the work battalions, the so called ‘stroybats’ [Russian stroityelniy battalion – construction battalion]. They told us we would join the Anders’ army and instead we found ourselves in Novosibirsk as stroybat members, building a metallurgical plant at minus 40 degrees Celsius. And there, a group of 200 soldiers, we mutinied and organized a strike.
,
During WW2
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My mother didn’t want to go with us to Lwow, she went to her sister in Chrzanow instead. And there she died, and Hanka also went to Chrzanow during the Lwow period, to be with our mother, and they both died in Kety, near Chrzanow, in a kind of ghetto sub-camp [Editor’s note: the town of Kety is located 40 km south-west of Chrzanow, 20 km south of Oswiecim (Auschwitz) 20 km north-east of Bielsko. No information has been found on the existence of any camp or sub-camp in Kety. The likeliest possibility is that it was a permanent outpost for Jewish workers working outside the ghetto].
I lost touch with my mother and sister when I was still in Lwow. At the end of 1941 I learned that they were both dead, acquaintances wrote us from there, non-Jews with whom we indirectly kept in touch.
I lost touch with my mother and sister when I was still in Lwow. At the end of 1941 I learned that they were both dead, acquaintances wrote us from there, non-Jews with whom we indirectly kept in touch.
,
During WW2
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Each of us lived on their own. I lived in Lyczakow [Lwow neighborhood], in a rented apartment.
,
During WW2
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